Themes in the Firefly Episode Safe

Watched the Firefly episode, Safe, the other night on my Firefly DVDS (the Xmas present I got from my parents last year). Considered skipping it, since it was my least favorite episode and the only one that made me really cringe and want to change channels when it first aired. The ignorant villagers who decide to burn the telepathic girl at the stake motif is a TV pet peeve of mine - this comes from seeing one too many Westerns do it, everything from Little House on the Prarie to Dr. Quinn to well, Gunsmoke. Firefly reminds me more of Gunsmoke meets the adventures of Han Solo and Chewie before they met Luke, which explains why I like it. At any rate - when I re-watched the episode, I noticed something I hadn't before, which allowed me to forgive the writers for using that old Western cliche. The sequence was necessary to address a central theme in the episode as well as emphasize why Simon and River stay with Serenity and why they gave up everything.

The episode is called Safe - and safe is like most words in the English vernacular - it can mean more than one thing. Depends on the context. Here it stands for people - not things. People who you can feel "safe" with or can "trust" to protect you even at great cost to themselves.

A summary of the episode may be in order, but since I find summarizing things deadly dull, I'll just summarize and analyze at the same time - to entertain myself. (This in a nutshell is why I do not have a professional career as a movie or television critic - I don't follow the established rules.)

( Spoilers for Safe )